


vagabond

by whoseline



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-07-29 11:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20081380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoseline/pseuds/whoseline
Summary: and he's young, so maybe that idealistic view of the world still exists for him, but it's slipping away and all he can do is flee.





	1. Chapter 1

He’s not spontaneous at seventeen, and yet it takes him all of ten seconds to close his Literature textbook, sling his backpack strap over one shoulder, and walk out of his third period English class, eyes unblinking and fixed on the path ahead, as if he were wearing blinders. 

The teacher doesn’t call after him and he doesn’t turn around, letting the pounding of his heartbeat drown out the shock of it all; just ten more steps and he’s through the solid oak school doors. Fifteen more, then he’s paused at the edge of the teachers' parking lot where the forest towers above him, chirping and dripping and breathing. 

The pavement is darker where it meets the crumbling soil, soaking up water from the morning rain. The canvas of his backpack greedily takes up the moisture when he tosses it down. Ryan momentarily worries his papers, his textbooks will be ruined, then shrugs. It's not worth his concern anymore.  
The muggy Canadian air sits heavy in his lungs as he waits for something, anything to pull him back to English class, to convince him to stay. 

A drop of water lands on his sneaker and rolls off, sinking into the muddy asphalt. Another falls on his shoulder, then his ear, cold and uncomfortable and yet it’s then that Ryan knows he can’t turn around, that he can’t go back through those imposing wooden doors and back to class, or, in a greater sense, back to his silent house where his father will be sitting, joyless. Stoic. Never truly loving, at least not in the way Ryan needs. Used to need. 

There’s no real path through the woods. He starts walking anyway. 

Ryan is seventeen years and two days old when he first steps into an unfamiliar bar eight miles from his hometown and doesn’t get laughed at when he asks for a beer.

“No problem, kid,” the bartender says, and slides him an amber-brown bottle; Ryan sips at first and then swallows: he’s deeply, unbearably thirsty.

It tastes disgusting going down and even worse coming back up fifteen minutes later as he crouches, head pounding, in the dim parking lot. His throat is raw and his stomach aches, but when he stands up, wobbling slightly with dizziness, he stands straighter than he ever has before.

Ryan sleeps wrapped in a moldy sleeping bag next to the road and dreams about drowning in his own thick syrupy blood, choking as the emotionless eyes of his father watch from afar. 

He wakes the next morning and immediately coughs up a mouthful of bile, hot and sticky on his bare chest. The mosquitoes swarm. 

He’s seventeen years and twenty-four days old when he stops hiking, sits down against a pine tree glistening with sugary-sweet sap, and cries until his head pounds in time with his heartbeat. Ryan swears he’ll never go back and knows he never will. 

Ryan is seventeen years and one month old when he jumps out of a trucker’s metallic blue cabin and doesn’t stop running until he can’t feel the calloused, slimy hands of the man running across his skin anymore. He wastes all of the water he has in his dinged-up army canteen scrubbing at the grease marks on his arm, and that night he sleeps curled up in a tiny ball as if he were five again, still reliant on a stuffed animal and a nightlight to drift off. 

He doesn’t hitchhike after that, just walks along roads and freeways, through brambles and ditches and field full of brittle Canadian grasses waving in the spring air.

He’s seventeen years and just about two months old when he stumbles into some coastal fishing town and collapses onto the rickety porch of the nearest house he can find. Ryan sleeps for fourteen hours straight and only wakes up because a boy his age, tall and slim and dark-haired, sits on the warped railing next to him and asks if he’d like something to eat. 

“God, yes,” Ryan says, and watches as the boy walks across the street into a general store and returns six minutes later with a bowl of soup, hot and fishy and tastier than anything he’s ever eaten before. 

The boy doesn’t speak until Ryan’s finished, eyes trained on the grimy school uniform he’s been wearing since he’d left. “Where you from?”

“Nowhere,” Ryan says, and the boy nods, one rosy lip drawn between his teeth.

“And where you headed?” 

Ryan looks around, and at seventeen years and two months old, decides that he’s done running. 

“Here, I think.”


	2. impossibilities

He learns the boy’s name is Chip, short for Charles, and that he’s lived in this town all his life and works at his father’s general store. He doesn’t know what he wants to become and doesn’t mind letting Ryan sleep in the room above their store as long as he’s quiet.

He’s sixteen, a little bit younger than Ryan, and four weeks later Ryan’s pressing Chip up against the rough wooden side of the town’s fishery and shoving his hand into the other boy’s loose-fitting pants.  
It takes two minutes and fifteen seconds for Chip to slam his head back against the splintering planks and come hot and sticky over Ryan’s warm fingers. 

“Thanks,” Chip says when he’s all fixed up again, and Ryan shakes his head and stares up at the bright blue Canadian sky while wondering just how fucked he really is. 

He gets a job at the fishery and spends his days slicing the heads off scaly, shimmering fish along with twelve other guys. At first, he throws up after almost every shift, not used to the metallic smell of blood, but after they clock out one day another worker hands him a tube of paste- strongly menthol scented- and tells him to slather it under his nose. 

Ryan tries to thank him but the other worker just shrugs and says “I get it.” They work in silence and pass the menthol back and forth whenever a new crate of fish arrives. 

Chip turns seventeen three weeks from then and Ryan fucks him in some tourist’s empty cabin a mile from the town, ignoring the nauseating guilt that rises up in his throat and creeps bitterly into his mouth. His lungs tighten and he can't breathe- can't do this, this is fucking wrong, it's illegal and immoral and they'll be damned- then Chip kisses him and his heart stutters and he draws in a struggling, painful breath and continues.  
They fuck twice and both times Chip’s face reddens with angry, shameful tears; Ryan doesn’t press the matter and instead tells him about the places he’s heard about, San Francisco and Greenwich Village, where no one gives a shit if they’re two men in love or if they’re not and just fucking, where there’s no such thing as abusive parents or siblings or classmates; Chip shudders and comes with Ryan pressed against his pale back, their hands clasped together and the cabin air warm and sticky. 

They sit on the porch at dusk and Chip talks about leaving the town, Ryan about staying and making a living for himself, and when they’ve run out of things to talk about they make out, startled apart by every snapping twig in the shaded underbrush.  
“It’s a long hike back,” Chip says, looking out at the dark landscape, and Ryan, understanding, takes his hand and pulls him into the cabin, where they sleep curled together on the hard, scratchy mattress using their sweatshirts as pillows. 

And he thinks he might be happy, at seventeen years, four months, and five days old.


	3. Chapter 3

Ryan doesn’t go to school anymore but instead works in the fishery, saving up cash to shove in the pockets of his ratty jeans. He spends his free time at the library solving crossword puzzles and sleeps curled up on the general store’s guest room mattress. The townspeople nod at him in the streets and sometimes let him into their houses, where he talks with the fathers about the fishery while their children press mugs of hot, bitter tea into his hands. Ryan drinks them and learns to hide his wince when he scalds his tongue. No one gives him shit for being new, unfamiliar, and for that Ryan is grateful. 

He’s seventeen years and six months old when Chip introduces him to Colin, who’s almost nineteen years old and interested in marine biology but not fishing, though he’s employed at the fishery as a shipment processor and his own father is a fisherman born and bred. He’s dark-haired and dark-eyed and reminds Ryan of every boy he’d been running from eight months ago. 

They hike along the beach during the odd afternoons they all have free from school or from their respective jobs; Ryan tells them things about his old town but not too much, and Chip and Colin share town secrets about the drunks and gamblers, who at the high school is pregnant or hooked on heroin. It’s comforting, having them to talk to. 

Colin refers to him as “Ry” once or twice and he’s surprised by how much the nickname, however simple, pleases him. It’s a luxury he’s never had before, and he pretends the flushed pink of his cheeks is from the light sea breeze rather than from the sense of belonging that washes over him, intense and unfamiliar. 

One afternoon, Colin shows them the many varieties of crustaceans and seaweed in the tidal pools near the dock, his fascination with the tiny creatures captivating, and Ryan understands when Chip can’t look him in the eye that night as he jerks him off, slick and fast and quiet in the back of the general store.

“You like him,” Ryan says when they’re done, not clarifying, and Chip nods, jaw set. He doesn't mention it again-neither of them do-but it still sticks in the back of his mind, even when Chip reaches over and squeezes his hand in a quiet apology.


	4. blindness

Ryan doesn’t ask questions when Chip finds him after school some days and drags him a mile into the woods, eyes dark and wanting, shoulders tense as he writhes against Ryan’s touch.  
He thinks about Colin reeling in an Aleutian skate, native to British Colombia, as Chip clings to him and bites Ryan’s shoulder until it stings. The tiny indentations are there for a week; every time he sees them Ryan’s reminded of that stupid Aleutian skate and the way Colin’s hands had deftly undone the fishing wire, the slick plastic glistening and surely cool to the touch. 

And Ryan doesn’t understand why Chip doesn’t want to go out drinking with Colin when he asks, at least until they’re actually in the bar and Colin’s gaze focuses on a waitress, her skirt rucked up over her ass as she wipes the grimy tables down. 

“God, she’s fuckin’ hot,” Colin says, head ducked low and cheeks pink. Ryan’s heart aches, but he tapes the scalloped edge of his glass on the table in agreement.  
“Yeah,” he says. “I’d do her.” The words are thick in his mouth.  
“You should.” Under the table, Colin bumps his knee against Ryan’s. “Go.”  
Ryan sips his beer, ignoring Colin’s gaze. “And where am I taking her? Out back?”  
“There are more than enough rooms upstairs,” Colin says, and raises his head to look past Ryan’s shoulder. “Hey- here she comes.”

The pretty waitress brings him up to a stockroom and lets him fumble with the clasp of her bra until it comes undone and her breasts slip free, soft and pink and so foreign.  
Ryan kisses her and moves where she wants, runs his fingers up her thighs and around her waist, pretends its Chip touching him when she undoes his belt and tugs his cock out. Her hand is smooth and gentle and nothing close to the calloused palms that he prefers, and after thirty seconds of uncomfortable silence Ryan stops her and tells her that he’s sorry, but he can’t. 

She looks at him in the dim light as he rushes to tuck himself away, ears aflame. 

“The boy you’re with,” she says, pulling the straps of her bra over her pale shoulder. “He put you up to this?”  
“In a way,” Ryan says.  
She nods, fixes her top, then glances back up at him. “He have anything to do with why you can’t get it up for me?” 

She leaves before he can say anything, before he can deny it, and Ryan slinks back downstairs to find Colin slumped against the bar, waiting for him. 

“Did ya fuck her?” Colin slurs as they walk along the road towards town. “I would have. God, she was gorgeous. Her mouth would be so warm and soft arou-”  
And Ryan pukes up the beer he’d drunk earlier, coughing and hacking and trying to ignore Colin’s hand squeezing his shoulder.  
“You’re okay, Ry,” Colin says, and all that’s running through his head is how absolutely, completely fucked he is.


End file.
